Algeria hit by bombings, six dead

SI MUSTAFA, Algeria, Feb 13 (Reuters) Seven bombs went off almost simultaneously in Algeria today, killing six people east of the capital Algiers in an elaborate assault by suspected Islamist rebels.

Residents said four of the attacks targeted police stations.

''I was woken by a huge blast. I thought it was an earthquake,'' said Aaref Jumaa, a resident of Si Mustafa village close to Boumerdes town 50 km east of Algiers.

The Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), claimed responsibility for the bombs, Al-Jazeera television said.

Al-Jazeera said the group, which has stepped up a campaign of bombings and ambushes in recent months, made the claim through a telephone call to its office in the Moroccan capital Rabat.

The statement could not be independently verified.

An Interior Ministry statement quoted by the official APS news agency said six people, including two members of the security forces, were killed in seven attacks in the Boumerdes and Tizi Ouzou districts east of Algiers.

Thirteen people were wounded, including 10 members of the security forces, the ministry said, adding that five of the seven bombs were rigged in vehicles.

Four people were killed in Si Mustafa village while two were killed in Meklaa, it said. Other bombs blasted Draa Benkheda, Meklaa, Illoula Oumalou and Souk El Had, which was hit twice.

Jumaa, standing near the blast-pocked walls of Si Mustafa's police station, said the bomb went off at 0945 hrs beside the building, which is across the street from his home.

Pools of blood lay in the gutter of the main road.

''From now on I will sleep with fear in my heart,'' said Fatima, a woman clearing debris from her kitchen.

In Draa Benkheda, a resident who declined to be identified said he saw several presumed attackers filming the immediate aftermath of the blast.

TRUCK BOMBS Islamists began an armed revolt in 1992 after the then military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was set to win.

Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed. The violence has sharply subsided in the past few years.

The Tizi Ouzou and Boumerdes districts are often the scene of clashes between Islamist guerrillas and security forces in the oil-and-gas-exporting Mediterranean country.

Today's attacks were the first on police stations since near-simultaneous truck bombs exploded at two police stations on October 30 in the Algiers region, killing three people.

On December 10 a bomb exploded beside a bus carrying foreign oil workers in an upscale Algiers suburb, killing two people and wounding eight.

That attack was claimed in a video posted on the Internet by the al Qaeda-aligned GSPC, the main rebel group fighting to install Islamic rule.

A statement purporting to come from the GSPC and published in Algerian newspapers also claimed responsibility for the October 30 attacks. The GSPC said last month it was adopting the name Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb.

Some security analysts believe the GSPC wants to transform itself from a domestic movement in Algeria, where it is under pressure from security forces, into an international militant force capable of striking in both North Africa and in Europe.

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